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ARCHIVED - Using External Service Delivery Key Performance Indicators


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2.  Implementing Service Delivery KPIs: Then, Now, and Future

The KPI project started with the help of public-sector service delivery managers responsible for the delivery of external services to citizens, businesses, and visitors to Canada. These experienced practitioners have developed business management expertise that maximizes the effective use of resources—employees, facilities, technology, and knowledge—within the limits of existing budgets to meet the service expectations of their clients. Service delivery managers within the GoC contribute and share best practices readily and are eager to understand and use new technologies, techniques, and methods to improve their service capabilities.

It is this community of practitioners that has identified the basic measures that are the foundation of daily management of operational service activities. Several industry standard measures, such as Average Wait Time or Service Level, are already in use by most major GoC service operations. The initial KPI project workshops were characterized by significant agreement on the primary measures used for both operational and strategic decision-making functions. During each workshop, participants reviewed practices, sources, and formulas for calculating measures. Terminology was compared and industry standard terms were quickly adopted. In several areas, the practitioners noted where current technologies would limit the capability or quality of data to calculate a KPI. (Note: These KPIs have been identified in the draft KPI document, and further work will be required to assess their viability and value to overall performance management.) With a consistent set of measures supporting MAF, the Secretariat proposes to use these measures for reporting systems, submissions, major Crown projects, and regular and routine GoC performance management reporting.

Data collection and reporting frequency have been a matter of considerable discussion within the performance measurement community. For those points of service employing management technology, service data are collected in real time (i.e. details on phone calls, visits, and Web traffic are collected as the service request occurs). Various reporting tools are used to aggregate these data. The most sophisticated tools, most frequently categorized as business intelligence software, provide the capability to extract reports on any frequency summarized by time interval.

The "roll-up" of departmental and agency performance data to present an enterprise (and strategic) view of government performance in external service delivery activities will require interoperable technologies, standard business processes, and a common view of the data.

The development of government-wide performance measurement practices is an ongoing priority for all departments and agencies. In the past two years, the Treasury Board has brought together measurement expertise from the private and public sectors to lay a foundation for external service delivery KPIs for both operational and strategic management. The current inventory of KPIs will remain a work in progress for several years.

In the short term, the Secretariat will reconvene the Performance Measurement Working Group and focus on the following tasks:

  • finalize the current in-person and Internet measures;
  • review the current proposed KPIs for completeness and feasibility;
  • add standard cost indicators for all channels;
  • complete a comprehensive and effective list of KPIs for the Mail/Back Office Channel;
  • support implementation of KPIs across departments and agencies as a means to horizontally measure performance across channels; and
  • submit a formal proposal to the Service Management Board to approve core and operational KPIs for consistent measurement across government.

In the medium to longer term, several projects are being conducted concurrently to complete the development of a standard cost and performance management framework for external service delivery. These include the following:

  • creation of common service definitions;
  • determination of data collection and reporting cycles;
  • development of a service management framework incorporating standard service level agreements and associated objectives and indicators; and
  • development of an enterprise-level dashboard.

The adoption of standard sets of external service delivery KPIs will:

  • enhance the consistency of performance management across government;
  • contribute to the utility of the emerging standard performance reporting systems and technologies;
  • simplify new service-level agreements between policy and service delivery organizations;
  • support benchmarking activity both within GoC and with other governments; and
  • clarify executive briefings on external service delivery.

The Secretariat is also considering the benefit of establishing an ongoing Performance Measurement Working Group to be responsible for co-ordinating and implementing standard performance measurement methodologies across the federal government.